Members of the Mars 500 crew wave before being locked into the isolation facility in Moscow in June 2010. Two volunteers from Italy and Russia will step onto a sandy mock-up of the Martian surface at around 1:00 pm (1000 GMT) after a gruelling eight-month journey -- all without ever leaving a Moscow research center.

Mars 500

A group of volunteers isolated from the outside world for eight months stepped out on a mock-up of Mars on Monday, reaching the half-way point of their experimental "voyage" to the Red Planet. Russian Alexander Smoleyevsky and Italian Diego Urbina wore white space suits as they stepped onto a version of Earth's nearest neighbour, whose sandy surface was recreated in a Moscow research centre, an AFP correspondent at mission control reported. They are later to be joined Chinese volunteer Wang Yue.

Outfitted in heavy white space suits, two volunteers from Italy and Russia were to exit their capsule and take their first steps on the red sands -- all without ever leaving a Moscow research centre. The Volunteers are aged from mid-20s to late 30s, among them engineers, doctors and a physicist, are crammed into the spaceship, where living quarters measure just 20 metres long and less than four metres across.

The "space walk" is a key moment in the unprecedented experiment where six volunteers are spending 520 days in isolation to test how humans would respond to the pressures of the there-and-back voyage to Mars.

spacewalk

After the space walk begins at around 1000 GMT, the volunteers will plant the flags of Russia, the European Space Agency and China in a mission that Russia and Europe hopes to repeat for real by 2040.

The "space walk" marks a key moment in an unprecedented experiment in which six volunteers are spending 520 days in isolation to test how humans would respond to the pressures of the there-and-back voyage to Mars.

Officially called Mars-500, the project joins six men from Europe, Russia and China in an experiment that focuses on the physical and psychological strains of extended space travel. Although not weightless, the crew of 20- and 30-year-olds is spending its time in tight quarters that is preventing their bodies from getting their normal doses of exercise.

The virtual space craft's living quarters measure just 20 metres (yards) long and less than four metres across, with special armchairs set up on planet's surface to help the men deal with the 32-kilogramme suits.

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